Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is defined as “the abil­ity of the brain to rewire itself through experience”.

We typ­i­cally sum­ma­rize a lot of brain research by encour­ag­ing Sharp­Brains read­ers is to seek for nov­elty, vari­ety and chal­lenge, as guide­lines for “brain exer­cise” that will help build new con­nec­tions in the brain, force one to be mind­ful and pay atten­tion, improve abil­i­ties such as pattern-recognition, and in gen­eral con­tribute to life­long brain health.

A friend just sent an update on her amaz­ing expe­ri­ence in Namibia (the pic on the right shows the entrance to the Uni­ver­sity of Namibia) that shows how Travel and Engage­ment with mean­ing­ful projects can pro­vide superb men­tal stim­u­la­tion, or “brain exer­cise”. This is rel­e­vant at all ages, and we are encour­aged to see orga­ni­za­tions such as Civic Ven­tures and Elder­hos­tel that offer oppor­tu­ni­ties for baby boomers and older adults who want to main­tain active minds.

Try pic­tur­ing in your mind, as you read this, all her dif­fer­ent brain areas that are get­ting needed stim­u­la­tion through her Namibia experience.

UPDATE: my friend just wrote to expand on the “be mind­ful” angle by say­ing that “it def­i­nitely requires pur­pose­ful pro­cess­ing of the infor­ma­tion that you are con­sum­ing in order to make it a use­ful brain exer­cise. For exam­ple, I always try to jour­nal or write thought­ful emails about my expe­ri­ence in order to try to best under­stand it.” Great point.

With her per­mis­sion, here you have:

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Dear Friends,

I am just return­ing from Namibia and am buzzing with excite­ment about all of the oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to make an impact there when we return with our stu­dents next Spring.

Namibia is very dif­fer­ent than I expected. It was the last coun­try in Africa to gain inde­pen­dence from colo­nial­ism, gain­ing inde­pen­dence just 20 years ago. Thus, it is much more devel­oped than any African coun­try that I have vis­ited, with rel­a­tively good infra­struc­ture and no exist­ing debt. That said, the lega­cies of apartheid can still be felt in today’s soci­ety, and the peo­ple are very clearly deal­ing con­stantly with issues of race and iden­tity. One of the most inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences that I had was attend­ing a “braai” (the Namib­ian ver­sion of a bar­be­cue which basi­cally con­sists of Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Gates deliv­ered a very inspir­ing com­mence­ment speech in Har­vard last week. I rec­om­mend read­ing the full Remarks of Bill Gates and reflect­ing on his core mes­sage, which may be sum­ma­rized in its last sentence:

• “And I hope you will come back here to Har­vard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your tal­ent and your energy. I hope you will judge your­selves not on your pro­fes­sional accom­plish­ments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deep­est inequities  on how well you treated peo­ple a world away who have noth­ing in com­mon with you but their humanity.”

A note­wor­thy aspect of the speech was the dis­play of what neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists call Exec­u­tive Func­tions, which are mostly located in our Frontal Lobes–the most recent part of our brains in evo­lu­tion­ary terms, and that enable us to learn and adapt to new envi­ron­ments. What makes a “sharp brain”. You can read more about this in our post Exec­u­tive Func­tions and MacArthur “Genius Grants”.

See here Bill Gates’ advice on how to find solu­tions in com­plex environments-and how he applies a learned pat­tern to guide his actions in the field of AIDS prevention:

• “Cut­ting through com­plex­ity to find a solu­tion runs through four pre­dictable stages: deter­mine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, dis­cover the ideal tech­nol­ogy for that approach, and in the mean­time, make the smartest appli­ca­tion of the tech­nol­ogy that you already have whether it’s some­thing sophis­ti­cated, like a drug, or some­thing sim­pler, like a bednet.”
• “The AIDS epi­demic offers an exam­ple. The broad goal, of course, is to end the dis­ease. The highest-leverage approach is pre­ven­tion. The ideal tech­nol­ogy would be a vac­cine that gives life­time immu­nity with a sin­gle dose. So gov­ern­ments, drug com­pa­nies, and foun­da­tions fund vac­cine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the mean­time, we have to work with what we have in hand and the best pre­ven­tion approach we have now is get­ting peo­ple to avoid risky behavior.”
• “Pur­su­ing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pat­tern. The cru­cial thing is to never stop think­ing and work­ing  and never do what we did with malaria and tuber­cu­lo­sis in the 20th cen­tury  which is to sur­ren­der to com­plex­ity and quit.”
• “The final step  after see­ing the prob­lem and find­ing an approach  is to mea­sure the impact of your work and share your suc­cesses and fail­ures so that oth­ers learn from your efforts.”

Cer­tainly, good advice for us too to refine our Brain Fit­ness efforts. Here you have a rel­e­vant frag­ment of my (AF)recent inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg (EG):

AF: Please tell us more about what the Frontal Lobes are

EG: We researchers typ­i­cally call them the Exec­u­tive Brain. The pre­frontal cor­tex is young by evo­lu­tion­ary terms, and is the brain area crit­i­cal to adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, plan for the future, and self-regulate our actions in order to achieve long-term objec­tives. We could say that that part of the brain, right behind our fore­head, acts as the con­duc­tor of an orches­tra, direct­ing and inte­grat­ing the work of other parts of the brain.

I pro­vide a good exam­ple in The Exec­u­tive Brain book, where I explain how I was able to orga­nize my escape from Rus­sia into the US.

Sig­nif­i­cantly, the path­ways that con­nect the frontal lobes with the rest of the brain are slow to mature, reach­ing full oper­a­tional state between ages 18 and 30, or maybe even later. And, given that they are not as hard-wired as other parts of the brain, they are typ­i­cally the first areas to decline.

Well, I’d say Mr. Gates has pretty mature and solid pathways!

The new edi­tion of Newsweek brings us a great cover story titled Stronger, Faster, Smarter. “Exer­cise does more than build mus­cles and help pre­vent heart dis­ease. New sci­ence shows that it also boosts brainpower—and may offer hope in the bat­tle against Alzheimer’s.” Check it out!

We addressed the ques­tion Is phys­i­cal fit­ness impor­tant to your brain fit­ness? recently:

Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.

Accord­ing to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that higher lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cantly more ben­e­fi­cial than lower amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none. He also found that Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a lot of recent buzz about brain fit­ness. A New York Times edi­to­r­ial printed today states:

When tested five years later, these par­tic­i­pants [in a cog­ni­tive train­ing study] had less of a decline in the skill they were trained in than did a con­trol group that received no cog­ni­tive train­ing. The pay­off from men­tal exer­cise seemed far greater than we are accus­tomed to get­ting for phys­i­cal exer­cise — as if 10 work­outs at the gym were enough to keep you fit five years later.

and

If fur­ther stud­ies show that men­tal exer­cises can improve every­day func­tion­ing, doc­tors may need to pre­scribe such train­ing, senior cen­ters may want to set up “brain gyms,” and aging Amer­i­cans would be wise to do brain-stretching activ­i­ties. For this pur­pose, even the Medicare pre­scrip­tion drug pro­gram, which crit­ics deem too con­fus­ing for many older peo­ple to nav­i­gate, could prove an unex­pected bless­ing. Spend 10 hours mas­ter­ing its intri­ca­cies today and you could be a lot sharper than your com­pa­tri­ots five years from now.

Read the rest of this entry »